Track Listing

1. He's Simple, He's Dumb, He's The Pilot
2. Hewlett's Daughter
3. Jed The Humanoid
4. The Crystal Lake
5. Chartsengrafs
6. Underneath The Weeping Willow
7. Broken Household Appliance National Forest
8. Jed's Other Poem
9. Miner At The Dial-A-View
10. So You'll Aim Toward The Sky
11. So You'll Aim Toward The Sky

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8936 in Music
• Released on: 2000-05-08
• Number of discs: 1

Amazon.co.uk Review
Grandaddy, for the uninitiated, are best thought of as belonging to a loose association of American bands who have risen to a modest prominence in the lean post-grunge years. Their confederates would include such determined mavericks as Mercury Rev, Flaming Lips, Eels, Beck and New Radicals: acts who share a certain willingness to accommodate as influences not only the music they love but the music they--and the general public--have had no choice but to deal with. Hence, all these bands can evoke the Eagles as much as the Velvet Underground and ELO as easily as Nirvana. Grandaddy's The Sophtware Slump is a fine collection of songs, mostly paced at a melancholic mid-tempo and decorated by queasy low-budget keyboards and songwriter Jason Lytle's eloquently fragile voice. At his most graceful, as on the sparse piano ballad "Underneath The Weeping Willow", Grandaddy sound like the Blue Nile might have if raised in Californian sunshine rather than Glaswegian drizzle--and that's a lovely thing. --Andrew Mueller

Customer Reviews

Very enjoyable
My first taste of Grandaddy and very pleasant it as been too. I came to them via Midlake, which is probably contrary to most other people as I think it was Grandaddy that influenced Midlake and not vice versa. Irrespective of how I got here,it has been worth the journey and I shall be searching out more of their albums.

I suppose this is labelled as psychedelic rock - the tempo is slow and the music based around swirling synthesisers which cast a hypnotic and entrancing effect. Gorgeous vocals to boot, very laid-back and melodic.

In a word - gorgeous!

A Beautiful Concept Album of the Highest Order
Could be a great themed soundtrack from a sci fi movie,could be an early warning of an ecological disaster.Most certainly is a concept album of the highest order,gentle,beautiful & emotional.A complete album in every sense,deserves to be listened to over & over again & its underlying message will have a profound effect.Very Highly Recommended,more than just Excellent,it is bordering on Perfection

Poor old Jed
The Sophtware Slump succeeds on many levels. One, it has one of the most wonderful examples of cover art in Rock History; two, it is a viable and beautiful concept album, and with what a concept; three, It contains some of the most beautiful pop-rock songs ever created by the hand of man.

The concept is a simple one - the conflict of computers and nature, and Grandaddy exploit this to its full. There are paeans to a strange Tulgey Wood-esque landscape littered with "vacuum bags" and "Oily Rags" and populated with deer ('Broken Household Appliance National Forest'), odes to the futility and sadness of science ('Chartsengrafs') and, at the album's core, the story of Jed the Humanoid, a robot created to do good who becomes depressed and dies of alcoholism. The twin songs of 'Jed the Humanoid' and 'Jed's Other Poem' are complex studies of the issue of artificial intelligence, and are far more beautiful and deep than Spielberg's A.I could ever have been.

The cover art reflects these concerns, with broken keyboard keys forming the title and band name over a stunning cold backdrop of mountains and meadows. Wonderful.

In all, a perfect piece of art, one that should adorn any self-respecting music fan's shelf. Unmissable.